Companions
by blacksand1
Summary: Shirley arrives in the afterlife and finds a companion in someone she didn't expect to. ShirleyMao


Within the void, pieces of a young woman were being placed back together. Her body regained its form first, the particles of smooth, peach-toned skin forming together without hair, clothing, or the grievous gunshot wound that had sent her here in the first place. For a moment, the young woman resembled a very large infant. After several seconds, bright orange hair sprouted from her head and flowed into a long waterfall of hair that tied a portion of itself back. Soon after that, her clothes formed, but they were the only thing changed in death; every part of her outfit turned a pure, clean white that matched her surroundings perfectly.

Her internal organs then formed, and once that had finished, her mind pieced itself back together. Her memories came back to her in chronological order, starting with her blurry memories of early childhood and ending with her dying confession of love to a boy her memory classified as both 'Lelouch' and 'Lulu'. Once everything was in order, Shirley Fenette was finally allowed to slowly open her jade green eyes.

She silently started asking a million questions as she stared out into the never ending whiteness above her: Where was Lelouch? Why wasn't she still in pain? Where had the poorly-lit room she remembered being in seconds ago gone? This was only a fraction of the questions buzzing around her mind. She tried to remember what had last happened… Lulu had been in tears, the pain in her abdomen had slowly started fading, and she had felt like she was slipping into sleep after being awake for hours, yet she was also struggling to stay awake so that she could assure to Lulu that she'd love him no matter what. But she hadn't quite finished her sentence.

It dawned on her just then. This was death. She was in the afterlife.

Shirley furrowed her eyebrows and found the strength to push herself into a sitting position. She continued to stare out at the void, lightly shaking her head as she tried to comprehend the lack of an endpoint in this realm along with the circumstances of just being here. This didn't make any sense; she had been raised with stories of a paradise waiting just beyond death for everyone who worked hard not to succumb to sin, and she'd tried her hardest to be good. She had said her prayers, read the bible, tried to be kind and righteous whenever she could, all so she could get to the fabled paradise. She had wanted to see her father again on the other side, her grandmother, any of her friends who had died young… Had she not been good enough to get in to paradise? Had she done something wrong?

She finally wondered, "Is this all I get?"

"I think you're going to get a little more than just this." Shirley jumped, letting out an 'eep!' sound as she did. She took a tiny moment to marvel over how it hadn't echoed before turning to the source of the sound. Her eyes widened as much as they possibly could, and her pupils shrunk down to the size of pin-pricks.

Sitting beside her was the familiar and frightening face of the Chinese man who nearly made her kill Lelouch. Apparently, he had died at some point. However, there was something… off. Well, in a _literal _sense, his headphones and visor were off and sitting beside him; on a side note, this revealed his pale red-orange eyes, which Shirley couldn't help but notice were actually quite pretty. In a slightly less literal sense, Shirley noticed that the Chinese man's clothing had also turned all-white. That was different, too. But what seemed to be the most different about him was his face. Throughout their entire encounter the day they both met and parted ways, a wicked grin had been plastered to his face, signaling to her the fact that he had NOT been a very well man. But now, he actually looked rather bored (she had no idea _what _that said about his mental state, since she wasn't the mind reader here). That didn't stop Shirley from staring at him with fear saturating her eyes.

The Chinese man rolled his eyes and said, "Oh come _on_, quit staring at me like I'll rip your heart out and eat it. We're _dead_, what would be the point of screwing with you now?"

Shirley bit her lip and looked away; he had a point, it would be kind of stupid for him to mess with her now that they were… dead. Her fear had distracted her from the fact that she was dead. She was dead, she wasn't in heaven, and she was stuck with a psychopath (who seemed markedly less psychotic today (what time was it, anyway?)). Right as she accepted that fact as just that, a fact, thoughts began to pour into her head by the truckload; nearly all of them consisted of what she should've done in certain situations, what she should've said to certain people, how she should've acted, how she could've changed it so she could've lived at least a _day _longer.

The Chinese man smirked; "Just as I suspected, you're thinking of everything you could've done."

Shirley shot him a glare and snapped, "I thought you said you wouldn't mess with my head. Stop snooping around." Shirley's authoritative tone made him sit up straight for a second, but immediately he realized _who _had delivered the order, and relaxed again. The redhead quirked an eyebrow at that small bit of submissive behavior. And then her eyes widened again as he leaned forward all the way so that he was quite up in her face. At this distance, she could see that his eyes were more pink-orange then red-orange.

"Look very closely at my eyes," the Chinese man said sternly. "When I was alive, they had a purple tint with a red bird symbol on them. Do my eyes look like this now?"

"… No," Shirley apprehensively replied. Her Chinese void-mate took this opportunity to lean back to his normal position.

"That's right, they don't," he repeated. "And that means I can't hear your thoughts. Which is _quite _the relief- Lelouch popped up in there far too often-" Shirley cut him off by flicking him in the forehead. He stared at her for a second before finding the nerve to glare at her.

"No bad-mouthing Lelouch, either," Shirley ordered. "Anyways, if you can't read my mind, then how did you know what I was thinking?"

The Chinese man's glare dropped into a vaguely amused smirk; "First, I was always good at reading people even _before _I got the power to hear their thoughts; second, I went through the exact same thing when I finally accepted the fact that I was dead."

Shirley's eyebrows went up by just a fraction; "Really?"

"Really," he replied dryly. Shirley took a brief moment to puzzle over him; he looked and sounded far more stable now, though several things from his life seemed to be ingrained in him… It'd been a year since their encounter- if he had died soon after it, then it was probably a good guess that he had been sitting here for quite a while. Perhaps all this time alone actually did wonders for the man's sanity…

She was brought back to the present moment by her albino voi-dmate continuing with, "I suppose you were thinking 'Why didn't I tell Lulu how I felt sooner?', or 'Why didn't I try to be nice to that one girl who sat in the corner all the time?', or 'Why didn't I just smack Milly when she groped me the first time?'… 'Why didn't I try other options instead of Lulu and try to think of other things than him'- _OW_!" Shirley had once again cut the Chinese albino off by flicking him in the forehead, though just a smidge harder this time.

"I was _not _obsessed! … Okay, sure, I spent a lot of time thinking about Lulu, but that wasn't my entire life," the redhead snapped, "Don't hate me for not being involved in international terrorism like everyone else I hung out with! I was just trying to be a teenager, weren't you one once?"

He blinked at her with wide eyes before quirking an eyebrow in confusion; "What do you mean 'wasn't I a teenager once'? I'm seventeen!"

Shirley could only stare at him after that before quirking an eyebrow of her own; "You _are?_"

"How old do I _look_?" he wondered quasi-sarcastically.

Shirley cocked her head to the side, put a hand to her chin, then replied, "About twenty-three or twenty-four, but now that I think about it, if you were wearing something more 'normal' you'd _probably _look your age." He blinked a few times more before looking at his arms, inspecting them as if he was trying to see what she was talking about. Shirley couldn't help but smile and chuckle a bit; he was like a kid~! … Was she really finding the man who made her doubt herself to the point of nearly killing Lelouch _cute_? Perhaps the fact that he was her only companion in the place was finally dawning on her. But wouldn't that make her _less _friendly towards him?

Eh, did it really matter at this point? She was _dead_, _he _was dead, _he _was also powerless, so there was really no point in continuing to be hostile towards him… Now, actually _liking _him could take a little more convincing, but hey, they were dead. There was more than enough time for that.

Shirley maneuvered herself into a more comfortable sitting position and asked, "Anyways, what did you think about when you had your little 'I could've done this and that' moment?"

The albino man seemed slightly surprised that she was starting a new dialogue exchange, but didn't call any attention to it. He just decided to lean back on his hands and reply, "Well, I wondered why I accepted the mind-reading power in the first place, I wondered why I didn't try to master it instead of leaning on the one person whose mind I couldn't read, I wondered why I had even used the power so much that I stopped being able to control it, and I wondered about so many more things that you'd get bored very quickly if I explained all of it."

"Now how do you know that?" Shirley asked semi-jokingly.

He raised an eyebrow again and replied dryly, "I've been in your head, I know what does and doesn't bore you. Trust me."

Shirley rolled her eyes and decided to change the subject; "You mentioned earlier that this wasn't all I was going to get for my afterlife… How do you know that?"

A shadow passed across the Chinese man's face; "Because you aren't me."

Now the redhead's interest was piqued; "What does that mean?"

He rested his head on one of his hands; "After I died, I woke up here. The first thing I wondered was why it was so quiet. Ever since I got the power to hear what's in people's heads, it had always been very _very _loud, no matter where I was. I heard everyone's voices at once, it was enough to make me think my head was splitting apart-" Shirley winced at that imagery "-so I almost started freaking out when I got here and there weren't any voices in my head except for my own. But then, another voice started to speak. It was loud, loud enough that I thought the thousands and thousands of voices were back. It said I had done bad things, but I wasn't bad enough that I couldn't be saved; it told me that being here, being all by myself, that was the punishment for everything I had done when I was alive."

He smirked, but it didn't look like a normal smirk- it looked rather sad, actually; "At first, I wondered what the hell it was thinking; finally having my mind back to myself, not having to hear the inane and disgusting thoughts of other people anymore, was the best thing I could ever ask for. I enjoyed the quiet for a little while… But finally being able to think made me think about all the terrible things I had done. It made me finally see that I was the same as everyone whose mind I read… I was a bad person." Shirley could feel her heart softening; she tried to fight it, but it proceeded without her approval.

Now, he looked miserable- there were absolutely no details, he looked like he wanted to die all over again; "Apparently, realizing this wasn't enough. I had to live with that, accept that. All by myself. For a year. I've missed the noise so much…" Shirley couldn't stop herself from placing a hand on his head and stroking his snow-white hair; the albino flinched when her hand made contact, but he relaxed when he realized she didn't mean to hurt him. Shirley really couldn't tell what was motivating her now; he was the exact opposite of Lelouch, so she couldn't _like _him. Were her maternal instincts kicking in? No, that didn't seem quite right…

Shirley took her hand away, and a few seconds after she did, the Chinese man found the strength to remark, "They said that if another person showed up here, that meant I had suffered enough and that I could leave… So I guess this means I can leave?" Shirley blinked a few times; she was at first incredulous, since that was a pretty damn important detail to leave out, but immediately felt relief that she could _leave_.

The Chinese man got to his feet- making Shirley remember that he was _very tall_- and stretched before wondering, "The only question is, which way do we go?"

Shirley smiled and replied, "I have a feeling that if we'll get out of here no matter which way we go."

He let out a small chuckle and remarked, "That makes sense to me." Shirley could feel herself smiling a bit; he didn't look half bad when he actually smiled. And right then, she realized that she didn't ask the most basic question ever.

Shirley smacked herself on the forehead; "Ach, I never found out what your name was…"

He laughed again; "It's Mao." He then held his hand out to her; Shirley took a few moments to admire his long, graceful fingers. She had a feeling that, if given the opportunity to learn, Mao would've been very good at playing the piano with fingers like those. She took her mind away from that, then took his hand, intertwining her slightly less impressive fingers with his and letting him help her to her feet.

"Alright, Mao; let's get out of here," Shirley said, beaming wide. She didn't know why she felt so happy, but right now, it didn't really matter. Mao nodded and lead the way out of the void and into their true afterlife. Shirley didn't let go of his hand; she just wanted to enjoy the feeling of her hand in his, and she never really wanted to let go…

_***~Finis~***_

_**Pardon the OOC**_


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